Let’s Be Very Clear: The Chargers are the NFL’s Problem, Not San Diego’s

The Chargers and their shill scribes are having a tough time accepting that if they want to stay in San Diego and make money in San Diego, they need to take the financial risk to make it happen. The problem is, that’s counter to the narrative of all NFL owners.

If the Chargers leave San Diego, that decision is on them and the National Football League.

Not their fans.

Not the city’s taxpayers.

Not the city’s government.

I give you the serious-ears-Mitch-Albom-lede because apparently there is some confusion about whose fault the Chargers’ eventual exeunt will be.

This week at the NFL owners’ meetings in Dallas, Chargers owner Dean Spanos is making headway on an eventual relocation for his perennial loser of a team to Los Angeles after a half-serious tax measure aimed at building the organization a new park in downtown San Diego failed spectacularly at the ballot box.

(NFL commissioner Roger) Goodell said. “… We will continue to work with the local officials, but ultimately they have to determine what it is they want to do with the community and what can work for the community and the team.”

The community wants to do jack shit for ‘the team,’ which in this particular case means Spanos, a billionaire, who asked for public money. They told the Chargers that last month by voting down the stadium proposal—Measure C—by a 57 percent margin.

Asked whether the league can compel the Chargers to work with the city in light of the widespread belief that Measure C was doomed from the start, Goodell said: “The Chargers have worked. … This is not a new issue this has been going on.”

Oh? The Chargers have ‘worked?’ The Chargers have done dick but come to voters to ask for free money downtown to build a new stadium—a $2.3 billion project Dean was only going to kick about $350 million in on. Before that, they tried to get public funding without a vote and generally tried to blackmail San Diegans with the threat of moving to LA.

You know what’s an unserious offer, Dean? Telling the taxpayers in a city who demonstrably wouldn’t piss on fire to put you out that $350 million was the best you could do. An unserious offer is agreeing to keep your 7-9 broken record franchise here if we just sign away our incremental hotel revenue so you can host CBS executives in a suite modeled on the President-Elect’s wet dream.

If this is anyone’s fault, it’s Dean Spanos’ for not finding some other way to solve his “problem” besides the public coffers. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.